I thought it was working ok until earlier, I charged a few batteries up (6s) and checked one of them with a balancer, and it showed out of balance, so I checked another and that was the same, 4 of my 5 battery packs were showing out of balance, the 5th was showing High Voltage.

I was concerned about the high voltage since should it warm up (it's fairly cold at the moment) then it could cause problems, so I set about doing a discharge on it.

I plugged it into the MPA powerlead first then balance lead, went to my preset, no parallel and then Discharge, waited for the cell check and it came up with Bad Cell Count, Node Wiring XH, I remember something about the XH/FMA so I swapped it in the charger, and Bad Cell Count, Node Wiring FMA, I tried a couple of the ports on the MPA and the same happened.

As I'd been playing with the presets on the PC I set them to 6 cell instead of auto-detect, so plugged it back into the PC and set it to Auto, same result, it doesn't like working with only 1 battery, the only way I can get my pack voltage down is to discharge 2 batteries.

I checked various wires since I'm using home made extensions for the balance / charge leads, all the wiring is fine, tried a selection of batteries and no joy, get the same Bad Cell Count problem.

I thought it was working ok until earlier, I charged a few batteries up (6s) and checked one of them with a balancer, and it showed out of balance, so I checked another and that was the same, 4 of my 5 battery packs were showing out of balance, the 5th was showing High Voltage.

I was concerned about the high voltage since should it warm up (it's fairly cold at the moment) then it could cause problems, so I set about doing a discharge on it.

I plugged it into the MPA powerlead first then balance lead, went to my preset, no parallel and then Discharge, waited for the cell check and it came up with Bad Cell Count, Node Wiring XH, I remember something about the XH/FMA so I swapped it in the charger, and Bad Cell Count, Node Wiring FMA, I tried a couple of the ports on the MPA and the same happened.

As I'd been playing with the presets on the PC I set them to 6 cell instead of auto-detect, so plugged it back into the PC and set it to Auto, same result, it doesn't like working with only 1 battery, the only way I can get my pack voltage down is to discharge 2 batteries.

I checked various wires since I'm using home made extensions for the balance / charge leads, all the wiring is fine, tried a selection of batteries and no joy, get the same Bad Cell Count problem.

Any ideas?

Hi,

Can you confirm the voltages with a DVM? Did you notice the thermal tape changing color on the poly fuses? The charger must be set to the XH wiring mode with the MPA. You can also contact me at howard@fmadirect.com. Thanks.

Hi Howard, I'll do some more investigation on Wednesday, I'm hoping to speak with Andy at Optipower this week since I'm in the UK, and he's one of the main distributors for the powerlabs. I've tried both ways of the wiring modes on the charger, and all that happens is I get a "Bad Cell Count, Node Wiring FMA" instead of the "Bad Cell Count, Node Wiring XH".

Ideally what I want is to take it to optipower so they can see what it's doing, and hopefully help, I'm only 20-30 miles from them so it's easy to get to, but he's not often in the office

I thought it was working ok until earlier, I charged a few batteries up (6s) and checked one of them with a balancer, and it showed out of balance, so I checked another and that was the same, 4 of my 5 battery packs were showing out of balance, the 5th was showing High Voltage.

I was concerned about the high voltage since should it warm up (it's fairly cold at the moment) then it could cause problems, so I set about doing a discharge on it.

I plugged it into the MPA powerlead first then balance lead, went to my preset, no parallel and then Discharge, waited for the cell check and it came up with Bad Cell Count, Node Wiring XH, I remember something about the XH/FMA so I swapped it in the charger, and Bad Cell Count, Node Wiring FMA, I tried a couple of the ports on the MPA and the same happened.

As I'd been playing with the presets on the PC I set them to 6 cell instead of auto-detect, so plugged it back into the PC and set it to Auto, same result, it doesn't like working with only 1 battery, the only way I can get my pack voltage down is to discharge 2 batteries.

I checked various wires since I'm using home made extensions for the balance / charge leads, all the wiring is fine, tried a selection of batteries and no joy, get the same Bad Cell Count problem.

Any ideas?

Ah ha
I also make my own cell balancing cables for my A123 cells. The Cellpro wiring for the battery pack individual cells do NOT always go across the connectors in succession.

If you have a 5 cell LiPo and a seven cell connector, the individual cells all connect in succession, until you get to the last cell. That last cell ALWAYS connects to the Cellpro PL6 connector with the red wire. That indicates you may have a few connector pins that do not connect to anything.

Good catch. This is most likely the issue. I didn't notice customer said he had homemade balance cables before. If O.P. can post a photo of the pack wired up and connected to the PL, we can probably verify this in 10 seconds!

Tim Marks

Originally Posted by kyleservicetech

Ah ha
I also make my own cell balancing cables for my A123 cells. The Cellpro wiring for the battery pack individual cells do NOT always go across the connectors in succession.

If you have a 5 cell LiPo and a seven cell connector, the individual cells all connect in succession, until you get to the last cell. That last cell ALWAYS connects to the Cellpro PL6 connector with the red wire. That indicates you may have a few connector pins that do not connect to anything.

Good catch. This is most likely the issue. I didn't notice customer said he had homemade balance cables before. If O.P. can post a photo of the pack wired up and connected to the PL, we can probably verify this in 10 seconds!

Tim Marks

Just my opinion, but for me, I don't care for those multiple versions of those balance cables, and the requirement for a charger with a circuit board full of various connectors with different pin counts.

I've just standardized on a 9 pin connector on all of my batteries, with a corresponding 9 pin connector on my Cellpro Powerlab 8 charger. Can't make a mistake with this, and it works well.

Good catch. This is most likely the issue. I didn't notice customer said he had homemade balance cables before. If O.P. can post a photo of the pack wired up and connected to the PL, we can probably verify this in 10 seconds!

Tim Marks

The only home-made bit is an extension since the balance cable on the batteries are too short, so I made a 6S extension cable, as well as a power extension from the MPA. They're not over long, about 1m so that's not the issue, and I still get the same issue if I plug the battery straight into the board.

I'm going to do some investigation tomorrow, I'll get a DVM hooked up and see what the cells come out as, and compare that to my balance meter to see what's going on.

Can I just check while I'm on, is there a specific order in which to plug things in, I normally plug balance, then power, but it doesn't seem to make much difference which what round I try it, and I can't see that making the Bad Cell Count error.

I'll take a camera out to the garage tomorrow and if I still get the error, I'll take a photo

The only home-made bit is an extension since the balance cable on the batteries are too short, so I made a 6S extension cable, as well as a power extension from the MPA. They're not over long, about 1m so that's not the issue, and I still get the same issue if I plug the battery straight into the board.

I'm going to do some investigation tomorrow, I'll get a DVM hooked up and see what the cells come out as, and compare that to my balance meter to see what's going on.

Can I just check while I'm on, is there a specific order in which to plug things in, I normally plug balance, then power, but it doesn't seem to make much difference which what round I try it, and I can't see that making the Bad Cell Count error.

I'll take a camera out to the garage tomorrow and if I still get the error, I'll take a photo

Yeah

Take your 6S LiPo battery and plug it into the Cellpro Balance Cable assembly. Do not plug in the Cellpro charger end of that balance cable. Next, If you've got a digital voltmeter, connect the negative lead of your meter to the negative black wire of the balance cable that plugs into the PL6. The adjacent pin should have 3.8 volts (1 cell) on it. Next one over should be 7.2, then 11.4 , 15.2, and 19 volts DC. The last cell MUST be connected to the red wire, and with a 6 series battery pack the red wire should measure 22.8 volts. That's assuming each cell has 3.8 Volts DC on it.

Note that there may be a couple of skipped pins with no voltage on them. Also watch that you don't have 3.8, 7.2, 15.2, 11.4, 19, and 22.8 with two cells flip-flopped.

There's the problem. Your photo shows a 9 pin connector plugging into the PL6 charger. The balance cable wiring of the Cellpro PL6 and PL8 batteries specify that for a 6 cell battery pack, the balance cable connector going into the charger should have voltages as below:

There's the problem. Your photo shows a 9 pin connector plugging into the PL6 charger. The balance cable wiring of the Cellpro PL6 and PL8 batteries specify that for a 6 cell battery pack, the balance cable connector going into the charger should have voltages as below:

The Cellpro PL6 and PL8 chargers will set a failure warning if the wiring voltages do not match the above table.

That does leave pins 6 and 7 with no battery and no voltage on them.

That's only for FMA wiring configuration, so not using the MPA board, FMA does have the end cell on the end pin, XH/EH is where the end cell is directly after the cell before like mine is. I've tried both modes on the PL6 just incase, but the manual for the MPA specifies XH to be set on the charger.

MPA-to-Cellpro Battery Workstation Interconnect Cable
"This special cable is required to interface the Revolectrix MPA to either the Cellpro PowerLab 6 or PowerLab 8 Battery Workstations. The cable is 12 inches long, and includes a JST XH on one end and a JST PA (Cellpro) connector on the other end."

My 3-4 year old Cellpro 10S sharger was acting unstable giving various error messages. Sent it in for service, FMA re-calibrated and charged a couple of batteries to test it. Sent me an e-mail saying that my used balancing charge adapters had worn 3S pins and advised I buy new adapters. 10S now works stably with new adapters, worn adapters is probably main reason for cell count errors,etc.